No one who is serious about carbon capture technologies expects that it is feasible to store it underground in gaseous form and that has been known for two decades.
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
242 points (99.2% liked)
World News
49628 readers
2687 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
What if we liquify it into a black gooey form first?
It would actually be simpler to go straight to soot and rebuild the coal beds. Electrolysis to CO followed by reverse Boudouard reaction. EZ.
E-fuel is an important technology of it's own, because planes basically don't work without the energy density burning oil has, but stopping the reduction at hydrocarbons has proven a lot trickier.
Now I'm imagining a world where we produce coal in a factory from the air using solar power at peak times in the desert, the send the coal where it's needed and burn it again later. Literally renewable coal nonsense.
(not a serious proposal btw it just seemed really funny to imagine we're so addicted to the stuff we start making more just to keep using it)
It will either be fusion or nothing.
Why?
If I'm reading correctly, producing CO at room temp in a sealed vessel would essentially immediately produce soot and more CO2 to pump back through the system?
You need a catalyst and/or slightly elevated temperature for soot formation to actually happen, but yes. Information on what catalysts are the best is actually hard to come by, because this is usually a bad, accidental thing that happens and gums up your blast furnace. It sounds like just iron works to some degree, though.
Looks like gold and silver are the best for producing CO from electrolysis, wonder how they go for making soot
Well hopefully we don't try to do that while actively digging up more black gooey form to burn. If it was thought to be economical at any point in the future nobody would give a shit about hydrogen after all.
We have to get rid of the old gooey black stuff to make room for the new gooey black stuff. Obviously.
Goo in, goo out.
That's the thing you do after 2080 when you have too much energy. Because you have to add in all the energy from burning it, and it's very unproductive.
I read a popscience article about how US naval ships with nuclear reactors are now using carbon dissolved in seawater to create kerosene. So there's that.
Why would they need kerosene? Lol.
I'm picturing them hanging out with old lamps down there.
Jet fuel is essentially kerosene. The idea is to fuel the jet engines on a nuclear aircraft carrier after the bombs drop. Namely sustaining a Pacific fleet against China after supply lines are cut.
Ah, an aircraft carrier. That makes more sense.
For whatever reason I forgot about those momentarily. That was weird.
Jet-A is kerosene and a handful of additives, mostly to prevent gelling at low temperatures. The ability to produce jet fuel from sea water would be extremely useful, but I highly doubt they have developed a feasible system on board a carrier.
Those carriers are pretty big.
Kerosine will run a diesel engine, all I can think of.
Yeah but that doesn’t have to be efficient. It just has to be more efficient than crossing back over the Pacific Ocean to stock up on jet fuel
They do mention serpentisation in the article as an alternative, but point out almost none of the current projects are bothering with that, and are just going for immobilised storage in sedimentary rock instead.
they'll do anything to save us from the climate - create new technology, reinvent the wheel, anything anything EXCEPT LIMITING THE FUCKING EMISSIONS THAT ARE GOING TO KILL US.
Can't do that, nah, bro... just a few more hundred billions gallons... bro come on, just a few more...
You’re obviously not considering the economy. We have to find a way to consume our way out of this problem
load more comments
(1 replies)
what about storing it in plants like forests and jungles and algae? honest question; im a noob
edit: and bogs
Add bogs to that list. Worldwide, bogs store more CO2 than forests. Restoring them and making sure they don't dry up (which also would release a lot of gases harmful to the climate) would be a good way to capture CO2.
I don't have any numbers to compare it to other techniques though, sorry.
On the prairies traditional grass (ie: not the shit in your front/back yard) works better than trees ... because the grass has roots that can go down 7'+ and fire can't kill it.
I think one problem with this is that there is only so much land/sea on earth. Once all available land is forested you have completely maxed out this option. Then when a tree dies and falls over most of its carbon begins to be released back into the atmosphere by decomposing organisms so you are reliant on another tree taking its place to maintain status quo. Same for any biological solution (algae dies/eaten -> carbon released).
We have to complete the gas/crue oil cycle: we must make a freaking pit and beging throwing trees in to free space for more trees
Oil is cursed
It's all about quantity.
The fossil fuel industry is digging up the plants of forests and jungles and algae that have existed over millennia, then died and decomposed into oil, coal, gas. When you then burn it you release the carbon of hundreds of generations of plant life.
Fossil fuels are dead plant concentrate.
Two factors, basically.
Vegetation rots back out to the atmosphere. Bogs are better in that way, because they trap and grow over their own detritus. Managed forests are also pretty carbon-negative, because the carbon is now trapped in whatever wood products for centuries. Ocean-based stuff has had mixed results, though. You could also char and dispose of your biomass before it rots, but now you're adding complexity.
Which brings us to the second: It might be expensive and slow, relative to just artificially capturing it and shoving it underground. Plants are not known for their speed, and reasonably moist land is expensive.
That being said, it's still a serious contender for how to take care of carbon we've already burned, alongside this and other options like grinding up and spreading certain kinds of stone.
What others have mentioned here, plus seagrass and kelp. There is a lot of recovery to do of these once massive ecosystems, thus a lot of carbon to tie up.
Breaking News! The thing we told you was going to happen for the past 50 years is definitely still happening!
So all that billions of tons of carbon we dig up from the ground, sequestered for 300 million years, doesn't just make it's way back there?
Well fuck!
Who could have possibly guessed?
doesn’t just make it’s way back there?
Well, it kind of does, just like it did before. It's just way too slow for us hairless monkeys to see it happening, we're all gone well before that happens. Eventually some other lizard will crawl up to the land from the sea and maybe it's a bit wiser than us.
Oops! All hellscape!
Don't worry, at least the billionaire parasites and their offspring will survive in their underground shelters!
Not if we dump concrete in the intakes for their fresh air conduits! Hope they enjoy their tomb!
Honest question, does "10 times less" mean 1/10th? It makes no sense to me mathematically.
"We thought it was 10. Turns out it was 1."
Ten times less: x * 0.1
Okay, so it does mean "1/10th of". If words still had meaning then "ten times less" would mean "we thought we had 10 but we actually have -90".
Just do an atmosphere transplant, terraform the moon, and have space surgeons swap out the atmospheres
Ive never seen a carbon capture that would seem to be a net positive. Much less better than renewables or efficiency. Requiring insulation in new construction and subsidizing adding it to current is so straight forward.
view more: next ›